About the Author

John Douglas is the legendary FBI criminal profiler and former Chief of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit where he researched, investigated, and conducted interviews of some of America's most violent criminals. Over the past half-century, he either directly worked on or had overall supervision in over 5,000 violent crime cases. He is one of the foremost experts of the criminal mind, its methods, and motivations. Douglas is a veteran of the United States Air Force and holds a doctorate degree in Education, and lives with his wife, Pamela, in the Washington, DC, area.

Mark Olshaker is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and author of thirteen nonfiction books and five novels, including Einstein's Brain and The Edge. His books with former FBI Special Agent and criminal profiling pioneer John Douglas, beginning with Mindhunter and most recently When a Killer Calls, have sold millions of copies and have been translated into many languages. Mindhunter was recently adapted by David Fincher into a critically acclaimed and award-winning dramatic series on Netflix. Olshaker and his wife, Carolyn, an attorney, live in the Washington, DC, area.

Reviews

Us Weekly Absorbing and surprising.

Us Weekly Absorbing and surprising.

FBI veteran Douglas is best known as the inventor of criminal profiling as an investigative tool, and in this superbly written and narratively taut new work, he teams up again with Olshaker, his coauthor on the bestselling Mindhunter, to look at eight murder cases that have transfixed the popular imagination. By systematically applying the most advanced techniques of criminology to the information available, he provides new insights and suppositions, even into cases as well trod as that of Jack the Ripper, in some cases identifying who the murderer is, in other cases only who it is not. The cases involve Lizzie Borden, the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr., the Zodiac killer (who went on a murder rampage throughout the San Francisco Bay area about 30 years ago), the Black Dahlia Murder, Bambi Bembenek, the Boston Strangler, and the still unresolved murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey on Christmas 1996 (Douglas has served as a consultant and an expert witness for the grand jury in this case). In the Ramsey case, although he cannot identify the killer of JonBenet, Douglas is adamant that the parents, John and Patricia Ramsey, did not commit the crime. He profiles the killer as a young man or teen with a personal and specific grudge against John Ramsey. Agent, Jay Acton. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.